despite forecast and clouds, yesterday’s skies yielded only the briefest of sprinkles during the day. The skies cleared overhead, bright blue strewn with puffy white clouds.
Until day’s end, when the the clouds at the northwest horizon began amassing, mortaring themselves together in a solid dark blue wall.
Sometime before seven o’clock, the Thunder Beings spread their wings wide overhead, unleashing a torrent of water from the sky. It settled down into soft steady rain, the kind that does the most good for the land. And despite the cold this morning, we have soft soil rather than ice.
It seems that the spirits of the summer monsoons have paid us a return visit, however temporary, and while we harvested the last of our corn a few days ago, the current moisture will help to sustain next year’s crop. What is rain here is snow upon the peaks, and we are grateful for the early contributions to this year’s snowpack, the spring run-off from which will ready the land for next year’s planting season.
When I think of the sensory aspects of Autumn — and specifically, of October, the season’s defining month — one of the first images that leaps to mind is Indian corn. Deep brilliant colors in jewel tones, each kernel a jewel in itself, a tiny living gem among gems worn as the traditional dress of the first among the Three Sisters: Indian corn represents a sustaining spirit of season, of culture, of cuisine, of art.
It’s why I allocated this week’s Friday Feature post to the Corn Katsina, a beautiful longhaired, bearded being that personifies the spirit of this blessing. From its description in the Other Artists: Katsinam gallery here on the site:
The Corn Katsina emerges here from an ear of yellow corn on the front, from blue corn on the reverse. Hand-carved by master carver Josh Aragon (Hopi/Laguna) in the traditional Hopi style from a single piece of cottonwood root, and hand-painted in traditional patterns, the katsina stands just over 16.5″ from feather tip to base.
Hand-painted cottonwood root
$525 + shipping, handling, and insurance
Fragile; extra handling charges apply
One of the techniques for which Josh is known is the creation of dual-sided, dual-faced, dual-headed, dual-spirited katsinam. It’s an old tradition, one that not many carvers pursue on a regular basis. Over the years that we’ve carried Josh’s work in inventory, he’s produced single spirit beings with twin faces; spirits with two heads emerging from one body; two separate beings bound together in a single piece of cottonwood root. And occasionally, as here, the two spirits are one, manifesting differently as a matter of perspective.
Yellow corn is, of course, the food’s essential form, the one that most often finds its way to our tables. We eat it in the form of whole ears, roasted; as kernels, in sweet corn; dried and treated with lime to form hominy, used in posole; and ground into masa of varying levels of fineness, for use as meal or flour in making tortillas and tamales, corn cakes and atole, cornbread and pa’wen. Where I am from, the coarse meal is used to make breakfast cakes smothered in maple syrup; here, it is more likely to be ground into very fine flour, which finds its way into all sorts of dishes. Yellow corn meal is also used in spiritual contexts.
This katsina faces us as this fundamental spirit, of the yellow corn that sustains us year-round, rising from a still-green husk wearing a robe studded with golden jewels: mother-of-pearl, citrine, amber, carnelian.
But there are other forms of corn, too, less sweet to the palate but no less sustaining to bodies and spirits alike. In this part of Indian Country, blue corn is chief among them.
One of the most common varieties of Indian corn found here is nominally called blue corn, but its kernels actually tend to manifest in a spectrum of white and gold and blues that range from light blue-gray to indigo to violet, all in the same ear. It is not sweet like much yellow (and some white) corn is, but it is most certainly edible: Roasted, it gives off a rich aroma and has a slightly nutty flavor. Dried and ground, the masa is used in tortillas and atole (a warm breakfast cereal that is, in parts of Mexico, drunk as a cold shake-link drink), and often added to other foods like pancakes. One of the meals I associate with this time of year here is blue-corn pancakes with roasted piñon nuts in the batter.
But blue corn is also a form of spiritual sustenance, especially here. Both the pollen and the corn meal may be used for spiritual purposes, and ears of blue corn are prized for use in other ways. It is a different way of looking at this sustaining spirit, and Josh has incorporated that vantage point into this spirit.
Turned around, seen from the back, what on the front is a Yellow Corn Katsina becomes a Blue Corn Katsina. It emerges from the same bright green husk, abundant and whole, but instead of golden-colored jewels, its back robe is adorned with faustite, turquoise, sodalite, lapis lazuli.
Viewed in 360 degrees, all the way around the circle, and it becomes an entire spectrum, a bejeweled Indian corn rainbow. And sure enough, the rainbow finds overt expression in Josh’s rendering of the spirit’s case mask, a bright turquoise face with a mouth arcing outward in all the colors of the spectrum.
It’s a breathtaking manifestation of a traditional katsina, two spirits in one, just as the gift it represents sustains the people in two ways, body and spirit alike.
On a day when the sun now shines but more precipitation is promised, it’s a useful reminder to give thanks for the rain, the gift of the skies, and for the corn, the gift of the earth. Today, those gifts intertwine in one bright rainbow of sustaining spirits.
~ Aji
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